Happy Friday, PokPok fam!

We knew this would be an exciting week, let’s get right into it. 🔥 

This Week’s Juice 🧃

• 👀 BTC Breaks out of it’s high of 62.8k — what’s coming next? 🚀 
• 🔥 Dovish: Market surges as Powell says “the time has come” for Rate Cuts 🏦 
• 🪙 We’re looking to shift our Investment Strategy in preparation for a much-needed “altcoin season” 👀 
• 👍️ Mt Gox paid over 92% of creditors already ⛰️ 
• 🎮️ Sony builds a layer 2 👀 

What’s on today?

🔷 Market Analysis ✨

🔷 Our portfolio allocation strategy 📈

🔷 Yield Farming Opportunities 🚜🥛

🔷 VC Investments & Token Unlocks 🪙

Got any suggestions? Send us a message!

Getting up to speed! ⭐

FOMC Minutes & Powell’s Speech 📉 

This week has been fairly silent on the economic reports side, however, we had some key meetings which would give an insight not only into the strength of the US economy but the potential impacts on the markets in the coming months.

🚀 FOMC Minutes: An overwhelming majority of the committee believe a rate cut is appropriate for September. However, they are still seeking further data consistent with even lower inflation.

🔥 Powell Speech: The market gets excited as Powell says “the time has come” for rate cuts in September.

Following today’s Powell Speech, BTC has surged over 2.5% and NASDAQ over 1%. 🚀 

Mt Gox repayments coming to an end 🚀 

Mt Gox repayments have reached over 92% now as the value exceeds $6.6B in BTC.

Despite this, BTC has been holding up extremely well, confirming our speculation that most of the panic has subsided. Not only that, but the previous price action was primarily due to panic and not so much due to the price impact from repayments selling pressure.

Sony builds an L2 (SONEIUM) 👀 

Sony has recently announced that they’re building a Layer 2 called Soneium on Ethereum.

It’s crazy to see such a massive corporation have a significant interest in crypto, so much so that they want to make an investment in developing their own blockchain (layer 2) based on the OP stack.

With a focus on Entertainment, Gaming and Finance, it’s something to keep an eye out in the next 2-3 years (given timeframe).

Sony Block Solutions has outlined its three-year plan:

1. 1st Year: Focus on attracting Web3 users and developers.
2. 2nd Year: Soneium aims to integrate with Sony’s diverse product lineup, including Sony Bank, Sony Music, and Sony Pictures.
3. 3rd Year: the goal is to onboard enterprises and general decentralized applications (dApps) onto the platform.

Market Analysis ✨

What a week! We told you something interesting would happen. Over the past few hours, BTC has begun its attempt to break out of the current range.

Let’s inspect the market together.

Tago Ratio Update: Our performance ratio seems to have bottomed out and looking to pivot further to the upside entering a “bull market” zone. As we allow another week for the market to develop, this will be one of our key confluence indicators towards shifting towards a more risk-on stance in the market.

USDT Dominance

• Given the past changes in USDT Dominance, we’re expecting a regression to the 5.11% level (monthly VWAP) as a potential pivot point.
• We will be keen on further positive market performance until then. We’ve tested monthly VWAP pivots for USDT Dominance and it has proven to have high-probability reactions that give us conviction.
• A lower USDT dominance leads to more liquidity in the crypto risk market, particularly blue chips such as BTC/ETH.

BTC Analysis

• As we break out of the current range with 2H closes above the previous wick high, we’re looking at higher levels above.
• Cumulative Volume Delta has been on a consistent downtrend in the past few weeks as shorts build up in the market. In the past two days, we had a massive spike in Delta.
• This could be a run-up to a large short squeeze. 🔥 

Looking at the upside 📈 🚀 

• 🧲 Billions in liquidations @ 65.75k, 66.25k — two magnet levels with potential pivots for a retracement
• Primary Targets 👆️ @ 64.6k, ~66k, 67k, 69.75k
• BTC can move fast, a potential scenario would be a swing failure from our previous macro high of ~70k. Look to open shorts there on any large reactions at the wick within the next week if this occurs.
• As always, a reminder to take profits on the way up for long positions. Don’t be greedy.

Looking at the downside 👇️ 👀 

• The current price levels are high-resistance, we likely get a retracement if we start to lose buying demand from delta.
• We may retest the current VAH @ 61.6k as our first key level to the downside.
• Lower Targets (and long opportunities) 👇️ 57.4k, 56k, 54k
• We’d suggest against making panic-long positions at the moment, however remember that there is little risk in buying spot BTC/ETH as you cannot be liquidated.

Ethereum Analysis

• Ethereum has been severely underperforming today and over the past few days, which presents a key opportunity given a potential continuation of the BTC rally upwards.
• We suspect ETH will make a “spring-like” move at some point, so any longs should sit tight for now!
• Key Levels to the Upside 👆️ @ 2780, 2900, 3318, 3535
• Key Levels to the Downside 👇️ @ 2600, 2500, 2450, 2300

Altcoin Analysis

• Awaiting further confidence in altcoin dominance.
• BTC Dominance looking to make further highs, especially with blue-chip underperformance in today’s rally (e.g Ethereum)

Give us some altcoin analysis suggestions!

We're looking to add more to our Altcoin Analysis as "altcoin season" comes in play. Here's a couple, send us your specific suggestions!

SOL SUI TIA Other

We’ve made some changes related to altcoins on our portfolio strategy section. Check it out! 🤩 

Investment Strategy 📈

With a confirmed breakout to the upside for BTC, it can be very easy to want to start flushing cash into crypto, however, we will always remind you to keep reserves available.

We don’t want to inject further cash into altcoins yet, until we see a confirmed outperformance of altcoins in the coming weeks, however, we see this to be a high likelihood, and we’d like to begin forming a bias towards this starting from today.

We’ve modified our experimental allocation for next week by making the following changes:

• Long-Term Strategy: -5% 🔽 
• Short-Term Strategy: +5% 🔼 

We’ve allocated more funds towards Short-Term Strategy, particularly focused on blue-chip altcoin positions as they may start yielding higher returns on a potential rally towards 70k BTC in the coming months.

If altcoins fail to see strength in future dominance, we will look to revert this.

Type

% Allocation

Yield Farming

20%

Focus on projects with low token unlocks

Short-Term Strategy

20%

e.g trades (or else in USDC lending)

Risk-Off/Stable Lending

28%

e.g USDC lending

Long-Term Strategy

30%

e.g Bluechips & Long term plays

Hedging

2%

e.g Protective Puts

DeFi & Yield Farming 🚜🥛

Chain Performance

• Significant improvements in overall TVL in the DeFi space — much more encouraging for Yield Farmers as BTC gains stability and investors look towards early risk-on options again
• Varied top gainers for the week, however overall for the month Sui remains on top, alongside Hyperliquid coming in second 🔥 

Yield Farming Opportunities

1. High Risk/High Yield

• Pool: SUI/USDC on Sui (Turbos DEX) (Concentrated & Auto-Rebalancing)
• Current Yield: 1279.56% APY 👀 👀 (based on ~±15% concentrated range)
• ➡️ Stake here
• As Sui continues to outperform the market in terms of TVL, there is money to be made from the volume increases.
• Turbos DEX has been one of the highlights here, with a new auto-rebalancing pool which manages your concentrated pool.
• Warning: There is an additional risk to concentrated pools due to potential impermanent loss. Please keep this in mind before entering.

2. Medium Risk

• Pool: Hyperliquid LP (HLP) on Hyperliquid L1
• Current Yield: 14% APR 🔥 (based on last month’s annualised returns)
• ➡️ Stake here
• Hyperliquid is a brand new L1 with native protocols such as their Hyperliquid DEX
• They have a liquidity token (HLP) which provides a holistic liquidity on their DEX and you benefit from fees accrued and liquidations on the protocol.
• This can be a great long-term and fairly stable yield farm as TVL on hyperliquid has been consistently increasing, now ranked #13 in the whole of DeFi.

3. Stable/Low Risk

• Pool: SOL Staking & Restaking on Solayer (Solana)
• Current Yield: ~8% APY 👀 🔥 
• ➡️ Stake here
• Love Solana? Make sure you’re putting your SOL to work by staking it for yield.
• Got some restaking tokens on Solana? You can use Solayer to restake it again for more yield!
• And guess what? With the Solayer sSOL token, you can use it to provide liquidity to pools such as sSOL/SOL on Orca and Kamino for even more rewards! 🎆 

Altcoin Zone 🪙

Upcoming Token Unlocks

• $YGG - 27 August 2024 - 3.13% of M.Cap ($5.48m) 🔴
• $MAV - 28 August 2024 - 6.23% of M.Cap ($3.52m) 🔴🔴 
• $PORTAL - 29 August 2024 - 15.3% of M.Cap ($8.00m) 🔴🔴🔴 

VC Investment Highlights

Story Protocol

This week, Story Protocol raised another $80M in Series B funding, totalling their funding to $134.3M.

Website: https://www.story.foundation/

Story Protocol intends to revolutionise the management and monetisation of Intellectual Property (IP).

• IP Legos: Story Protocol converts IP into modular and programmable assets called "IP Legos." These IP Legos can be licensed, managed, and monetized through smart contracts on the blockchain
• Embedded Licensing Terms: Creators can embed licensing and royalty terms directly into their IP using Story Protocol. This ensures that anyone who uses the IP must adhere to the creator's rules.
• IP Monetization: Story Protocol acts as an IP monetization layer for models and fine-tuning datasets, enabling provenance, attribution, and compensation through blockchain technology
• Collaborative Creation: The protocol focuses on fostering collaborative creation by allowing creators to capitalize on their creativity and unlock the network effect.

Story Protocol Token (IP)

This is where our hands get sweaty. How can we make money from this as retail investors?

A token (IP) will be used as users stake to attest the validity of their Intellectual Property using smart contracts.

The token will also likely be used for governance purposes.

This seems to be a heavily VC-backed project and will likely have an open-market token. As users and businesses are looking to use their protocol for IP purposes, they would probably need to own the IP token, and likely in large amounts.

Keep an eye out over the next 6-12 months for updates on Story Protocol and potential launches of their token, we’re looking forward to seeing what they get up to.

We’re working on creating a structured system for our DeFi & Altcoin sections, so we want your feedback on which altcoins or sectors you’re most interested in. This allows us to prioritise your interests and find the best opportunities for you to dive right into!

How much of your portfolio do you allocate to altcoins?

Tell us a bit about your allocations and then submit your favourite alts/sectors!

I'm a BTC Maxi, sorry! 0-20% 20-50% 50-90% What's Bitcoin? My middle name is ALTS!

Thanks for reading today’s publication! We crave your feedback — got any suggestions for a specific analysis or questions for us?

Get in touch with at contact@tagoresearch.com or pop us a message on X at @tagoresearch.

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Disclaimer: The PokPok Pulse newsletter and any curated information provided by Tago Research are not intended as Financial Advice but as educational content for insights into the crypto market. Only invest what you can afford to lose. We are not liable for any losses incurred.